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Let the market handle it

During this year, I have seen a wonderful example in the tech industry of how the entrepreneurial free market system encourages innovation.  Yes, this story involves Apple but the focus is on Adobe.  Adobe is an incredibly innovative company.  They produce tools for creative professionals such as Photoshop.  The most notable innovation to come from Adobe is the Portable Document Format or PDF.  In December 2005, Adobe purchased Macromedia which produced among other products, Flash.  Everyone has been annoyed by the experience of going to a website and having to install or update the Flash Player.  YouTube videos at first ran totally on Flash.  Flash powered the video sharing sites and still does.  In 2007, Adobe received a huge letdown.  The iPhone was introduced.  As is common knowledge now, iOS (the operating system for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and AppleTV) does not support Flash and will probably will never support Flash.  Apple encouraged web developers to use HTML5 to write mobile web applications and has the most advanced HTML5 mobile browser today.  Google soon followed suit with Android but Mobile Chrome does support a limited version of the Flash Player.  Microsoft with Windows Phone 7 is support HTML5 only as well.  About 18 months ago, Adobe announced that it was developing a version of Flash that would allow developers to write applications that would run natively on iOS.  This innovation would keep Flash developers using Flash.  Apple responded by saying that it would not allow applications written using anything other than Objective-C (the primary programming language used for iOS and controlled by Apple).  Adobe then began to put it's efforts towards HTML5 tools and has produced some excellent products that developers can use to target iOS.  Apple did eventually back off and allow third party tools and languages so Flash applications can now run natively on iOS.  The point here is that Adobe took the route of innovation.  They didn't go to the government and try to claim that Apple was trying to push them out of the market unfairly.  The looked at the direction the market was going and found new opportunities.  If they had gone to the government and forced Apple to include Flash, iOS might not be the success it is today.  Flash is a resource hog and makes even very powerful processors run hot.  The choice to innovate is the right one.

Sun Microsystems chose not to innovate during the 90's with Java.  Sun went to the government, and claimed Microsoft was trying to use its market share to force a proprietary version of Java onto Windows users and force Sun out of the market.  Microsoft was labeled as 'too big to fail' and a threat to innovation and the consumer.  The government agreed with Sun and Microsoft was forbidden from distributing Java with Windows.  Today Microsoft is not the company it once was and is no longer a threat to Java.  More ironic is that the 'protection' afforded to Sun and Java didn't work.  Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle, a company that makes database software.  Sun Microsystems is run by Larry Ellison who is an "A shift-4 shift-4" in my opinion.  Oracle now has control of Java, the programming language that is used to write a majority of the applications on Android which is Google's mobile OS and which has dominant market share.  The amazing thing is that one of Oracle's first moves after acquiring Sun, was to sue Google for copyright infringement on intellectual property based on how Google used Java in Android.  So, the government 'protected' Java from a company using it to innovate (Microsoft).  Thus, Java was not given the exposure it would have had if it had been distributed with Windows.  Sun eventually failed and was bought by another company who is suing Google, the manufacturer of the largest consumer success of Java, Android.  

Worked out just fine don't you think?

Article by Simon Sinek

This was written by the speaker of the TED talk we watched in class about leadership.  The repeatedly line in the talk was "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it."

Why Entrepreneurs Love Steve Jobs | Blog | Daily Dose | Entrepreneur.com http://bit.ly/pbrWdM

Steve Jobs, Entrepreneur

I am sure everyone reading this has heard that Steve Jobs passed away Wednesday at the age of 56.  All we see of Apple today is the retail stores, the keynote addresses, the media hype surrounding product launches and the long lines to be the first to get a new product at release.  But also, Steve Jobs was the epitome of an entrepreneur.  He had a vision, that computing was accessible for everyone, which very few people shared.  He and Steve Wozniak bootstrapped the company.  Most importantly, he never gave up on that vision.  This quote, from his 2005 commencement address to Stanford University transcends high-tech and even entrepreneurs:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Also, I have read that Tim Cook and the Apple executives knew of Jobs condition when they went on stage Tuesday for the iPhone 4S launch.  This is why the presentation didn't have the usually Apple flair that we come to expect so we only notice it when it's not there.  But, they did it anyway.  That is another trait of an entrepreneur, to be able to inspire people to believe in your vision.  While hindsight is always 20/20, knowing what they did, the presentation was wonderful.

Steve Jobs definitely had his own vision of computing but he also listened to the customers.  For example, when the iPhone was originally released, Apple was the only developer for it.  There may have been works for a few 3rd party developers but Apple expected that new technologies such as HTML5 would enable web developers to create products accessible via the web through Safari on the phone.  Many such products have been created but the customers wanted more.  They wanted to be able to access the distinct features of the phone to create amazing products.  So, they got it.

Finally, Steve Jobs also created a whole new type of entrepreneur.  I personally have been inspired by this one.  That is the concept of the App Store.  An App Store lets anyone create a software product and distribute it to millions of people and outside of a small $99 fee, there is no other financial risk.  People are able to concentrate on their own unique idea and not have to worry about billing or distribution.  The App Store empowers the developer which is what technology should do.  There have been many new businesses from the App Store.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Cross-posted at http://blog.douglasstarnes.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-entrepreneur/

There Ain't Nothing Like an Apple Product Launch

Like many alpha geeks across the planet, I spent several hours today waiting for the latest news on mobile device we've been hearing about for weeks.  While the iPhone 4S did not meet the media hype (which is no fault of Apple because Apple didn't hype it), there were some cool things to see.  The Voice Assistant (formerly Siri), dual-core processor, high resolution camera and HD video recording were all welcome.  What amazed me the most is the number of people on Twitter who every time a new feature came on the live blogs, would declare that Microsoft and/or Android had that feature first.  Now, I'll admit that Android has a bigger market share than iOS and WP7 is gaining.  But a lot of people went to Android because of price, not features or quality or because they got tired of AT&T service (which in all fairness to AT&T is much better now).  The point is that Apple is not always first to the game.  They missed the demand for the AppStore and cut and paste was an afterthought.  However, even after Apple releases behind someone else, the competitor often ends up copying Apple's ideas.  So it doesn't matter that you are first to market.  People can always switch to someone with a better way of producing an idea.  It reminded me of what Eric said several weeks ago: "Value people over ideas" and "Execution is your best defense."  Apple defends itself with execution and it's how they are on top of the software industry right now.

09/27/2011

As soon as I get a chance I will blog about last nights class. The video was so good I had to get my ideas about it up first.

Why do I do what I do?

On Tuesday at the end of class we watched a video.  I took the scenic route home so I could think about it more.  Simon Sinek was the speaker and he kept repeating: "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it."  This inspired me to think about why do I do what I do?  Since I am a geek, I usually approach things from a technical view and am scared to abandon that view because I don't want to fall behind with the tech.  (That would make me look stupid in the eyes of my fellow alpha geeks.)  But the tech is what I do ... why do I do it?  People don't care that I "build distributed cloud applications on Amazon EC2 using node.js that can be leveraged by mobile clients and rich internet applications using HTML5 and CSS3."  In my mind they should care because otherwise they wouldn't reap the benefits of the tech.  But why do I do it?  What do I believe that makes me choose this?  I'm not doing it for money right now (although I hope to one day).  Last week, Eric said that people should be valued over ideas so how does this concept affect people?

My first belief is that each of us have unique talents that have to be discovered in our own personal way.  These talents cannot be discovered by standardized testing or jobs training programs.  We must have the freedom and flexibility to leverage our talents to their fullest degree.  Also, I believe that given ample opportunity, everyone has the potential to achieve this.  Notice I said ample opportunity and not equal opportunity.  While equal opportunity must be decided and guaranteed by an outside influence, ample opportunity is measured by the individual.  The moral of the story is that opportunity must not be limited.  The pair of unique talent and ample opportunity, can be enhanced or hindered by technology.  Technology that enhances must be flexible and accessible enough so that it is usable by a broad range of interests.  

For business a standard platform makes sense internally.  Standards are easier and cheaper to deploy and maintain but they also hinder individual traits.  This actually is (sadly) desired as deviances from procedures can take more time and money.  An simple example: using technology, you can play chess with someone on the other side of the world who you have never met and you don't even have to speak the same language.  You can be paired with an opponent who has a skill level like yours.  You can choose to have your pieces be maple wood while your opponent sees marble.  This is all impossible in the physical world.  Therefore technology has increased opportunity to leverage individual talents in unique ways.  A geek would ask "What language was the application written in?", "What OS is the server running on?" or "What browser is most useful for this?"  People shouldn't have to worry about that.  (If this sounds like I am saying geeks are not people that's another topic for debate.)

A few years ago I was a hardcore Microsoft fanboy.  I wouldn't touch anything that hadn't been blessed by the Redmond Gang.  I would wait with great anticipation for the next release of Visual Studio or Windows and then when it arrived, wait for the next one.  I'm not putting down Microsoft's products.  I am a huge fan of Windows Phone 7 despite its limitations which I think will be fixed soon.  I was not focused on using Microsoft technology to do what I believed.  I was a 'Microsoft' developer and not an 'application' developer.  If it couldn't be done using Microsoft software (a limitation/constraint) I didn't do it.  I was focused on what I was doing, not why I was doing it.  

Glance through the listings for IT professionals and you'll see descriptions that sound like what I wrote above "5 years of experience writing messaging applications using Sharepoint with C# 2.0"  When they are this specific ... they mean it!  The standard is set and no deviations are allowed.  Consumers who download smartphone apps might want to connect with Facebook.  They have a goal in doing this.  They want to be able to communicate something unique about themselves to others with similar interests.  This is why they use Facebook.  They don't want to connect to Facebook because it runs on XYZ nor do they care.

There has to be a summary in here somewhere.  I say that the reason I do what I do is because I believe that when people are not constrained by the technology, they can leverage their own unique talents.  That sounds like something from a marketing campaign.  But (and no offense to marketers) the goal of marketing is to make people think that your product is the only one to purchase, despite its constraints.  Marketing does not educate people to make up their own minds because that means they might decide to purchase a competitors offering.  Is it possible for me to be more specific? (without being limiting)  I also have unique talents and interests.  I want to create applications which enable people with those same talents and interests to communicate, collaborate and progress their contributions.  The set of talents and interests I have is not served best by a particular language or OS.  I doesn't matter which I choose as long as it doesn't constrain the users of whatever I build.  My choice of technology is driven by this goal.  So that is why I do what I do.